


Interlude

by orphan_account



Category: Wicked Gentlemen - Hale
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 22:51:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harper and Belimai, beyond the city.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interlude

**Author's Note:**

  * For [threerings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/threerings/gifts).



The faint smell of rotting apples permeated the study. Harper had left the window open. The heady aromas of the neglected family orchard had been long banished from the house in the years Lord Foster had spent away in the city, when the windows of the East Wing were kept solidly barred and a heavy layer of dust was allowed to settle along the relics of his family's existence. Today they invited themselves in.

Harper was settled in the study despite Mrs. Kately protesting that the room still needed a good cleaning. She hadn't expected him to use it, and Harper wasn't sure why he had wanted to. The study still held every sign of belonging to his father – Joan's father, to be precise – down to the quilted silk smoking jacket still hanging beside the door. Mrs. Kately, who was usually very precise with the under-servants regarding laundry collection, had evidently not seen fit to remove it. Harper stared at it for a moment, but let it be. There were other, less painful preoccupations for his mind: letters from Raddly and Waterstone that demanded at least cursory replies, and a wide, cloudless expanse of sunset-pink sky outside.

There was a knock on the broad study door that managed to be both hesitant and overenthusiastic. Giles.

"Come in," Harper said, a half-second before Mrs. Kately's son entered with the supper cart. "Any news?"

"Storm soon, Master William," Giles said. "Always is, sir, when it's this clear at sunset. He'll know already, no doubt. " Harper had meant news from the village, or from his more far-flung tenants. Giles, however, was far more interested in Belimai Sykes, and persisted in viewing the Prodigal as an otherworldly visiting spirit, temporarily concealed in the shabby guise of a weekend lodger. Which, Harper mused, he somewhat was.

"Any other news, Giles?"

"Oh, another letter for mum, sir. From a Miners' Collective. She said you might want to have a look at it, sir." Harper sighed. There was, of course, no official Miners' Collective currently existing. The same mining riots that had killed his birth father and several other prominent churchmen had ensured that the Inquisition thoroughly quashed any such organization that seemed to be growing in power these days. Nonetheless, enough small, ineffective Prodigal workmen's clubs and reformatory groups went by the name, perhaps out of a slight, suicidal sense of rebellion, that such letters rarely caught the interest of Inquisition censors.

Giles finished setting out the supper and Harper waved him out, searching through his stepfather's desk for an ivory-handled letter opener that he only half-remembered. Edward rarely wrote, preferring to send his news through Joan's sporadic visits to the estate; when he did, he was wise enough to address his post to Harper's housekeeper, and to make it as innocuous as possible.

Harper didn't find the letter opener, but that hardly seemed to matter when, a moment later, Belimai appeared at the sill. He clutched a handful of late apples and a heavy tome that Harper assumed was abducted from somewhere inside the (locked) family library.

"I could show you the library tonight," Harper said. "It was probably unlocked, anyway."

Belimai tossed the book in the air and caught it with the same hand. "Would you really? I'd be so pleased."

"Of course, you're permitted to borrow anything you like."

"Noble of you, Lord Foster." For a single instant, Belimai bared his sharpened teeth. It was as nice a smile as anyone could get from him. "Peerless. Already you're forcing your way into my wayward heart with such generosity." It helped, when dealing with Belimai, to pay more attention to his words than the acerbic tone he delivered them with.

"I am the soul of romance," Harper said.

"What's in the letter?" Belimai said, crossing into the study. Harper had made sure that there was at least a wan bit of firelight. He could see fairly well in darkness, though nowhere near as perfectly as the Prodigal, but he preferred some light from which to see his lover, particularly now that Belimai had had a week to adapt to the countryside. Calling Belimai healthier didn't seem appropriate; Harper still retained a country boy's notions of healthiness, which amounted to a kind of sturdy, rosy thickness. Belimai would never be thick, and he would certainly never be rosy. If anything, he seemed sleeker, his skin golden-sharp like he was lit from within by a faint, flickering candle. Given time, Harper supposed, Belimai might begin to resemble the fallen angels that were his ancestors, with flame for skin and the terrifyingly agile, mighty forms of warriors. This was not, however, a thought he could easily share with Belimai.

"I don't know what it is. I can't open it yet."

Belimai brandished a single pointed black nail, apples and book now safely deposited on a settee. "Need help?"

"Yes, it's from Edward."

"Should I leave you alone with it?" Harper knew Belimai understood his affection for his brother-in-law, and rather hoped the Prodigal was even a bit jealous, but there wasn't a trace of any particular emotion in Belimai's words.

"No." Harper watched as Belimai neatly sliced the letter open, taking a moment to glance at the book he'd abandoned. "Depaul's taxonomy of angels? This isn't approved, you know."

"Harper, I'm a fugitive Prodigal from the city. Please don't be so moronic as to assume that I care what the Inquisition's approved or not."

"No," Harper said faintly, taking the letter back. "It's just that I'm surprised you found it so quickly. My stepfather hid it pretty well…" Somewhere in the recesses of that library, no doubt, and if Harper had ever bothered to check there he would've wanted to read the book himself. "It's the only edition that ever included the fallen angels."

"From Abaddon to Zepar." Belimai said, helping himself to a pear tart. "I was leafing through it on the roof."

"I would have thought you'd already know about them."

Belimai shook his head. "No, though my mother once worked with a Lucy Zepar. We don't know any more about our Tragic, Repentant History than common sense permits. It's no use bragging that your great-aunt was Ozybouth, killer of newborns, when you haven't got a pot to piss in, and the lot of you Inquisitors would be after us for it, anyway."

Harper cleared his throat.

"Well, not you in particular," Belimai added. "Not anymore."

"But then what do you know?" Harper had fourteen glorious Foster generations drilled into his brain, and etched into tapestries that he'd banished to the attics long ago.

Belimai shrugged and picked at the tart. "How we came to be Prodigal. Repentence. Being good. Fitting in. Cheap cotton suits and hopefully getting through some schooling." For a moment, he looked as resentful as Harper had hoped he'd be over Edward. "You know this already, I'm sure. First thing I ever confessed to was not being good enough. That's the first thing we know."

Harper rose from his chair and buried his face in the sharp crook of Belimai's shoulder, breathing lightly on the paper-thin scars that had been left there. "I'm sorry. I wasn't…We're in my father's study, in my other father's home. I can't think clearly here, the way I can in the city."

"Too cluttered up with old respectability," Belimai said lightly. He turned his head so that Harper could brush a kiss below his ear. Forgiven. "You need my low street-smarts to keep you straight."

"That's why you're here." Harper murmured. He dropped Edward's letter on the floor. The city news could wait.


End file.
